Status of the Interix Port

This port aims to bring the rich collection of
Debian software to the Interix environment.
It is in a very early state, although it is quite useful. Highlights are:

gcc-4.2 including g++-4.2 and gfortran-4.2

X.Org 7.4 libs (no X server however)

Perl 5.10

Python 2.4

Ruby 1.8

TeXlive 2007

GLIB 2.20

GTK+2.0

OpenSSH client and server 4.7p1, including source

A similar, much older project is
Interopsystems /Tools
with its great
forum.
There is also a NetBSD package manager
pkgsrc port
and a
Gentoo
for Interix available. More on Gentoo
here.
And Gentoo patches
here.
Another similar, but technically very different project is
Cygwin.
I decided to start this project for the following reasons:

Debian software is usually more current than that on Interopsystems /Tools

In my opinion the Debian packaging tools are more powerful than
those used by Interopsystems /Tools.

Shared libraries are packaged more sophisticated on Debian,
e.g. they have a SONAME.

In unstable35 those packages can be found which needed no modification
from the official Debian unstable sources. In unreleased35 the modified
packages can be found. The last line is for arch-all packages.

You should create the file /etc/apt/preferences with the following
content to avoid updating arch-all packages to the standard Debian version
when a change for Interix has been made. See apt_preferences(5) for details.

Package: *
Pin: release a=unreleased35
Pin-Priority: 800

Architecture details

debian-interix currently doesn't use glibc, but
the libc (and libm, libcurses, etc.) provided with Interix.
Although most of the X.Org 7.2/7.3 libraries have been built for Interix,
there won't never be a native X server, as the Interix kernel doesn't
allow access to the raw graphics device. The only useful X servers that may
be built some day for Interix are the X11 VNC server and the
X11 RDP server.
You may use Interix X programs together with a Win32 X11 server, such as
Xming, however.

Sources used by the Interix Port

The binary packages for the Interix port are built from the official
Debian unstable source packages, with modifications specific to Interix applied,
if any. The patches can be found along with the packages in the
package pool directory.
Look for *.interdiff.gz files. The build logs are also available there.

Thanks

I would like to thank all people who helped improving this port,
especially those listed here.
Further help is always appreciated, if you like this port and want to help
please contact me.

Initial version of this document (based on PPC64 port page): 2007-05-27
Last update of this document: Wednesday, 23-Dec-2009 03:13:51 CET

Copyright 2007-2009 Martin Köppe <mkoeppe 'at' gmx . de&gt

This text is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any
later version.

This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any
warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or
fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for
more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as
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writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite
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